Arvind offers its online platform to third-party brands

BENGALURU: Apparel major Arvind is opening up its e-commerce platform for brands outside of the group, three years after it started building one for itself. The platform called NNNow.com that was launched mid-last year was meant for around 30 in-house brands, including Flying Machine, GAP and US Polo that are either owned or sold in India by Arvind through its Arvind Lifestyle Brands.

More than 30 other brands are set to go online with NNNow by the end of the current quarter, Mukul Bafana, CEO of Arvind Internet, told TOI. "The idea is to become a software-as-a-service player for all the fashion brands and this is a one-of-a-kind initiative in the e-commerce world. Our platform will be like an online high-street for big brands," Bafana said. Bafana was one of the co-founders of fashion portal Jabong and joined Arvind three years ago.

Arvind group has had a rough journey with its e-commerce initiatives so far. It had to liquidate two online only brands--Prym and Shuffle. Its online initiative was earlier headed by former Puma CEO Rajiv Mehta, who has since left the company . The group scion Kulin Lalbhai, who moved to Bengaluru to overlook the new initiatives, has since relocated back to Ahmedabad.

Arvind Brands, which runs all these brands, is based in Bengaluru, while the group is headquartered in Ahmedabad.Bafana would not comment on any of these issues though.

Other big fashion groups like Aditya Birla and Reliance Trends have Abof and Ajio portals respectively that sell their own products, competing with aggregators like Myntra, Amazon and Flipkart. Arvind Internet will only run the technology back-end and fulfilment, whereas the brands will independently be responsible for marketing their online presence.

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